benefits

Tara Walton/News services

Tanya Brancalion, the woman whose son Noah was killed by his father in a murder-suicide this fall, sits on her living room couch nestled under her son's blanket. Brancalion is being denied the few hundred dollars per month given to widows under the Canada Pension Plan Survivors Pension.

If she were just a year older, the grieving mother whose 6-year-old son, Noah, was killed by his father in a September murder-suicide, would qualify for an ongoing survivor’s pension.

She’s been denied because she now also lacks the other factor that would qualify her for a couple of hundred dollars each month: a dependant child.

“I think that when somebody goes through something as horrific as losing their family, that the government that they pay taxes to should have some kind of compassion,” Brancalion said Tuesday.

“It’s discriminatory and it’s arbitrary,” she says of the age eligibility rule enshrined in the original Canada Pension Plan act over four decades ago.

In September, while Brancalion was away at a girlfriend’s cottage for the weekend, her husband, Wojciech Kosalka, 43, killed their son Noah and then himself at the family’s Milton home.

In an interview last month — on the day that would have been Noah’s seventh birthday — Brancalion told the Toronto Star that while she and Kosalka were working through some issues in their marriage, nobody thought he would hurt their child. Noah was the centre of both of their worlds.

Brancalion said Kosalka, who battled alcoholism, never got the help he needed.

After the deaths, Brancalion applied for CPP survivor benefits. She received a $2,500 death benefit, paid in one lump sum. But in response to her application for a monthly survivor’s pension, paid to the surviving spouse or common-law partner of a deceased contributor, she got a letter saying she didn’t meet the eligibility requirements.

The requirements include being 35 or older at the time of the contributor’s death. Or, if younger than 35, having at least one dependent child. Noah was her only child.

To qualify for the benefits, she would need to be considered disabled or be 65 years and one month old, according to the letter.

Brancalion appealed the decision and was denied again.

“When I spoke to them about it they said, ‘There’s nothing we can do, it’s legislation.’ I said, ‘This is horrible — you’re punishing me because my son was murdered.’”

For Brancalion, an elementary school teacher now on leave, it’s not about money. It’s about the principle. (She estimates the pension would pay only about $200 per month, and a lawyer has advised her she might qualify as disabled because of the trauma she’s been through.)

“You pay into your Canadian pension for situations like this. If I’m not entitled to my husband’s Canadian pension, who is?” she asks.

“I shouldn’t have to prove that I’m mentally disabled to be given what I should be entitled to because I am a widow.”

In a written statement Tuesday, Human Resource and Skills Development Canada, the federal department responsible for the plan, said it was unable to comment on individual cases.

“We recognize that these are difficult times for families,” the statement reads in part, adding that the rules have been in place since 1966.

“The rationale is that younger survivors would be able to enter or return to the workforce and thus become self-supporting. On the other hand, it is recognized that older individuals, persons with disabilities and those with young children at home have a more difficult time achieving self-sufficiency and are therefore in greater need of the earnings-replacement protection that is provided by a survivor’s pension.”

Bob Baldwin, former chief economist for the Canadian Labour Congress, said in an email that it’s been recognized for years “that the rules are quite arbitrary and reflect conditions of the 1960s when the (Canadian Pension Plan) was created.”

In the 1980s and ’90s, Baldwin said, there was a “major consultation” on pension plan survivor benefits for people under 65. The discussion revolved around the choice of more generous benefits paid for a temporary period, or the existing low benefits paid for a lifetime. But since there was no consensus, no changes were made. In the 1990s survivor benefits were actually cut.

Bernard Dussault, former chief actuary for the Canadian Pension Plan, said Tuesday he couldn’t recall a previous challenge to the age of eligibility.

“I just don’t understand why it’s not based on the fact that you’re in this relationship and you’re the survivor of this relationship,” said Eileen Morrow, co-ordinator of the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses. “It seems to me pretty sad that she can’t get this benefit, given the circumstances.”

While Morrow is not a pension expert, she’s seen how government benefits are doled out, at times unfairly, in her line of work.

“Yeah that’s their rule, but sometimes these rules are made and they just continue historically until someone asks questions about why that rule is in place any more. Maybe this is the time for them to re-examine that.”